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Science Market Update

2014 started off with a bang in terms of interest in lab products at Texas A&M and the Texas Medical Center BioResearch Product Faire™ Sales Events last week, with 60 lab suppliers presenting their 2014 offerings to the over 600 participating researchers seeking new products, networking, and fact finding.

Have you been looking for ways to involve everyone in your lab in fun, yet professional life science events? If you are a researcher, post-doc, lab manager or purchasing agent at Texas A&M University, Biotechnology Calendar, Inc. invites you to attend our College Station BioResearch Product Faire™ Event on January 31st, 2014. Make sure to bring everyone in your lab to this life science marketing event, where you will enjoy a free catered lunch, prizes and the opportunity to discuss your research with colleagues and sales reps interested in helping you learn about new life science solutions on the market.

Texas A&M University at College station recently received a major influx of new life science funding for multidisciplinary quantum biophotonics research. The University was awarded $10.8 million from the Texas A&M University System. This new life science research funding will primarily be used to purchase new biophotonics laboratory equipment.

Texas A&M researchers recently received $1.8 million in life science research funding from the NIH. The project receiving funding, titled “Structure-Based Discovery of Critical Vulnerabilities of Microbacteria,” will be led by James Sacchettini, PhD. According to Texas A&M University, Dr. Sacchettini is a professor of biochemistry, chemistry and biophysics. His research interests are using X-ray crystallography to better understand the relationship between proteins and ligands. The NIH RePORTER provides more insight intothe project receiving life science research funding this year:

Lab suppliers interested in increasing lab sales leads and marketing university lab equipment may be interested in the latest research grants for graduate students at Texas A&M University. The Texas Sea Grant College Program at Texas A&M University is giving $30,000 in funding to 21 graduate students. According to the TAMU Times, the stipulations of these grants are that the research funding must be spent on research costs, including purchase of lab equipment, laboratory analysis and field work. This funding may lead to some potential lab sales leads for lab suppliers, but it also demonstrates Texas A&M University’s dedication to funding both student and professional research, making the school a research powerhouse.

The southernmost tip of the great state of Texas is known as the Rio Grande Valley (see map below), and University of Texas Chancellor Francisco G. Cigarroa is campaigning hard for the establishment of a South Texas School of Medicine, to be part of a new regional University of Texas research campus. UT already has two smaller campuses in the Rio Grande Valley, in Edinburg and Brownsville; mid-way between those two border cities is Harlingen, which is currently home to a Regional Academic Health Center that, under the Cigarroa plan, would become a full-fledged medical school. The new UT university campus would incorporate both the Brownsville and Edinburg college campuses, but with greater resources available to strengthen its research capacity. UT System Board of Regents voted to approve both plans last month. The next step is to convince the state legislature to give its support.

For both dairy and beef production, cows are an important part of the US economy and food supply. When they get sick, it's bad for business (and not too pleasant for the cow). The most common illness in cattle is Bovine Respiratory Disease (BRD), which accounts for losses of more than $690M annually in the US alone. To combat this threat to bovine health and productivity, the USDA has recently awarded a $9M 5-year grant to researchers at Texas A&M University's College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, in collaboration with colleagues at the University of Missouri, to study genetic selection for breeding more disease-resitant stock. A second $5M grant will go towards research into feed efficiency, again with the aim of breeding heartier, healthier, and more profitable animals.

Storms both meteorological and political have dominated the front page news in the past month, but the upset that has rocked Texas' Cancer Prevention & Research Institute (CPRIT) since the spring continues to make headlines in the science press. The journal Nature has published regular editorials since the flap began, intensifying in late October with the exodus of chief scientific officer and Nobel winner Alfred Gilman (right) and nearly 30 other scientists from the state cancer funding agency's review board. Here is our recap of the story, the issues at stake, and a look at where CPRIT is positioned to go from here.

It seems we can get oil from any number of unlikely substances these days, and a joint biofuel research team from Texas A&M and Cornell is trying to do just that. With a $2M grant from the NSF, researchers are studying how to extract the naturally-produced oil from algae. So next time you look at a green swimming pool, consider that a similar muck just might be able to fuel your car. Algae is an eukaryotic organism that is photosynthetic and generally aquatic, and it comes in a wide variety of forms. It can be a very small single cell organism like B. braunii or a very large multi-cellular organism like kelp. It fact algae is one of the newest and most promising subjects of research in the quest for biofuels.